Witchcraft, Gender and Queerness in Contemporary British Literature

In this chapter of the Queer Gothic Companion, I analyse a selection of fictional and poetic texts published in Britain in recent years which explore and reinterpret the versatile and iconic figure of the witch through a queer Gothic lens. These texts include Jeanette Winterson’s novel 'The Daylight Gate' (2012), Carol Ann Duffy’s pem ‘The Lancashire Witches’ (2012), (both published for the 400th anniversary of the Pendle Witches Trial), Emma Donoghue’s 'Kissing the Witch: Old Tales in New Skins' (1997) and Rebecca Tamàs’s poetic collection 'Witch' (2019). I argue that these texts offer a wide range of queer Gothic revisitations of the powerful, evocative figure of the witch across literary genres, ranging from fictional rewritings of historical events to fairy tales and experimental poetry.